2001 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
| Championship details | |
|---|---|
| Dates | 6 May – 23 September 2001 |
| Teams | 32 |
| All-Ireland Champions | |
| Winning team | Galway (9th win) |
| Captain | Gary Fahey |
| Manager | John O'Mahony |
| All-Ireland Finalists | |
| Losing team | Meath |
| Captain | Trevor Giles |
| Manager | Seán Boylan |
| Provincial Champions | |
| Munster | Kerry |
| Leinster | Meath |
| Ulster | Tyrone |
| Connacht | Roscommon |
| Championship statistics | |
| No. matches played | 63 |
| Goals total | 122 (1.94 per game) |
| Points total | 1490 (23.65 per game) |
| Top Scorer | Pádraic Joyce (3–45) |
| Player of the Year | Pádraic Joyce Declan Meehan |
← 2000 2002 → | |
The 2001 Bank of Ireland All-Ireland Senior Football Championship was the 115th staging of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the Gaelic Athletic Association's premier inter-county Gaelic football tournament. The championship began on 6 May 2001 and ended on 23 September 2001.
The format of the championship saw the biggest change in over 100 years with the introduction of the All-Ireland qualifiers. This system saw teams who were defeated in the provincial championships enter a secondary championship and the chance to qualify for the All-Ireland series. The Leinster Championship abandoned its group stage and returned to a straight knockout system. London declined to field a team in the championship due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. They were initially scheduled to host Mayo at Ruislip on the last Sunday of May but Connacht council first postponed the fixture and then outright cancelled the game. The previous fixture between the teams was in 1996 and the next after was in 2006.
Kerry entered the championship as the defending champions, however, they were defeated by Meath in the All-Ireland semi-final.
On 23 September 2001, Galway won the championship following an 0–17 to 0–8 defeat of Meath in the All-Ireland final. This was their ninth All-Ireland title and their first in three championship seasons. The first year of the "back-door" system, as it popularly became known, appropriately finished with the first All-Ireland winner not to win a provincial title. Galway came through the Qualifiers after losing the Connacht Semi-final to Roscommon. They beat Wicklow, Armagh and Cork in the Qualifiers, followed by a win in the re-match with Roscommon in the All Ireland Quarter-final. Their semi-final guaranteed that at least one "back-door" team would contest the All-Ireland final as opponents Derry entered the Qualifiers in the second round alongside Galway after losing the Ulster semi-final to Tyrone.
Galway's Pádraic Joyce was the championship's top scorer with 3–45. He was also named as the Texaco Footballer of the Year, while Declan Meehan was chosen as the All Stars Footballer of the Year.